In July of 2014, actress Jamie King posted a photo on Instagram with a caption about her experience trying to conceive her son James (born in October 2013). Since her son’s birth the actress has been open about
how she struggled to become pregnant. She wanted other women struggling to conceive to know that
they are not alone.
King admitted that becoming pregnant with her son was
a long, difficult and painful experience. She endured 8 years of pain due to
undiagnosed PCOS and Endometriosis, seeing nine different doctors before she found the one who diagnosed her and ended up saving her life from
a severe ectopic pregnancy. In her nearly 5 year journey to become pregnant, she endured
5 miscarriages, 26 IUIs and 5 rounds of IVF, most with no outcome.
Kudos to King for reaching out and being so honest about a topic that is still kept so quiet-
even in Hollywood where it seems no topic is off limits. There are more famous people out there who have struggled with infertility than one might expect. Very few talk about their infertility while they are going through it, but many open up and admit pregnancy did not come easy to them after the fact. A small few of them actually go into detail about the
cause of their infertility and their experiences with treatments; I wish more would share their whole stories, but understand why they might be afraid or just wish to keep a little of their private lives private. Below are 12 more celebrities who had difficulty trying to get pregnant.
Nicole Kidman
During her marriage to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman struggled to get pregnant. In a 2012 interview with the Australian magazine,
Who, the star revealed,
“I had tried and failed and failed and failed. Not to be too detailed, but I’ve had an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriages and I’ve had fertility treatments. I’ve done all the stuff you can possibly do to try get pregnant.” These struggles are what led Kidman and Cruise to adopt Bella in 1992 and Connor in 1995.
Five years after her divorce from Cruise, Kidman married country singer Keith Urban in 2006.
In 2008, at the age of 41, she gave birth to a daughter, Sunday Rose. After her struggles to become pregnant with Cruise, Kidman considered Sunday a miracle.
“Every woman who has been through all those ups and downs knows the depression that comes with it. So the way it just happened with Sunday was like, “What?” The percentages were so low. It is the miracle in my life.”
Lightning did not strike twice for Kidman in the pregnancy department, but they were able to welcome another baby into their family:
the couple’s second daughter, Faith Margaret, was born via gestational surrogate in 2010.
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson first started trying to become
pregnant in the early 90s when she was married to actor and director
Kenneth Branagh. At the time she was in her early 30s, but the couple
would never have any children together.
In 1997 she became pregnant with
current husband Greg Wise, but sadly the pregnancy ended in a
miscarriage.
Thompson suffers from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
(PCOS), a condition that affects a woman’s hormone levels which can
affect ovulation and menstrual cycles among other things. It often makes
getting pregnant very difficult. Thompson is one of the few famous
people to actually open up about her infertility and its cause.
Thompson
ultimately gave birth to a daughter, Gaia, in 1999 after her first
round of IVF. She and Wise tried IVF two more times in hopes of giving
their daughter a sibling, but after the two failed attempts called it
quits, partially due to the fact that Thompson in her 40s at the time, which
makes pregnancy more difficult on its own.
Celine Dion
Celine Dion underwent IVF for the first time in her early 30s. The treatment was a success and nine months later, in January 2001, she and husband of seven years Rene Angelil, welcomed their first son, Rene-Charles into their family. Having a second baby proved to be much more difficult;
it took Dion six attempts at IVF before she became pregnant a second time. Twin boys, Eddy and Nelson, were born in December 2010.
“I thought as long as my health permitted me and unless my doctor thought physically I couldn’t do it, then I would go on with the IVF until someone told me to stop,” said Dion in 2013 to
Mirror Magazine.
Deborra-Lee Furness (Hugh Jackman)
Hugh Jackman is another actor
who is open about he and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness’ infertility
struggles as he looks back to before they were parents. He admits that
they tried IVF several times only to have the resulting pregnancies end
in miscarriage. He even said in an interview with
People Magazine that
miscarriage is more common than you think, but it’s not really talked
about, adding,
“It’s almost secretive. But it’s a good thing to talk
about. It’s more common and it’s tough, there’s a grieving process you
have to go through.”
Jackman and Furness always knew adoption was a likely option for them (possibly due to the fact that she was already in her 40s when they got married). The couple is now parents to two
children, Oscar (12) and Ava (7),
who they adopted as infants.
Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields is another actress
who has been
very open about her infertility and its cause: cervical damage due to
the removal of precancerous cells made it difficult for her to become
pregnant.
She and her husband tried multiple IUIs without success before
her doctor ultimately recommended IVF for the best odds given her age
(she was 36 at the time). Shields talks about the injections, hormones
and tests (including egg retrieval) in her memoir
Down Came The Rain.
She became pregnant after their first round of IVF, but suffered a
miscarriage.
She and her husband continued trying IVF without
success for quite some time. In her memoir Shields even describes having
to sneak away at gatherings with friends for her husband to give her an
injection in a coat closet. After so many failures they had just about
lost hope. Then in 2002 they decided to try one more time
with their
remaining four embryos. That resulted in in a single pregnancy and nine
months later she gave birth to a daughter, Rowan.
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox (Arquette) could get pregnant,
but
couldn't stay pregnant. She was one celebrity who was actually pretty
open about her infertility struggles while she was going through the
experience.
She suffered several miscarriages, and learned that her
problem stemmed from her body’s overactive immune response to a fetus.
Basically her body attacked the growing fetus causing her to miscarry.
After
years of miscarriages and infertility treatments, Cox's 40th birthday approached. Knowing that her chances of conceiving were declining due to her age, she and husband David
Arquette decided to try
IVF. After several attempts she became pregnant and this time she kept stayed pregnant. The couple welcomed their daughter Coco in 2004.
Marcia Cross
Marcia Cross had wanted to be a mother since before she was 30. As the years went by she realized her internal clock was ticking and marriage was not happening for her.
She looked into adoption and even tried to get pregnant using a sperm donor at one point.
At age 40, Cross married stockbroker Tom Mahoney. She knew she would need help conceiving, so he couple decided to forgo the honeymoon and start infertility treatments right after their wedding.
At the age of 44 Cross became pregnant with fraternal twins via IVF.
Although Cross has never confirmed or denied the use of donor eggs in conceiving her daughters, she has spoken out about the subject, saying that
donor eggs do not make a baby any less perfect or beautiful, but that after 40 a woman’s fertility sharply declines and as she gets older so does the quality of her eggs.
I understand why women would want to keep quiet about the sensitive topic of whether or not they used donor eggs. Using donor eggs means that
your child will have genes from that donor rather than the mother who carries the baby. What a parent decides to
tell their child about their genetic beginnings is up to
them, not the media.
Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick tried for quite some time to become pregnant with their second child. Although she admitted that
they tried many different options and were disappointed time and time again, she never admitted just what they tried. Eventually they were able to have
twin daughters via gestational surrogate. She said that the hardest part was not being able to talk about it. To protect the woman carrying their baby from unwanted media attention,
the couple kept the news quiet until just weeks before her surrogate gave birth. Unfortunately after the news broke her surrogate was hounded by the tabloids to the point that Parker was concerned for the safety of her babies and the surrogate.
Parker is another actress who has avoided questions about using
donor sperm or donor eggs, but she has also not talked about what types of fertility treatments she herself underwent while trying to become pregnant.
There are rumors that they struggled to become pregnant with their first son, so it is not surprising that it was even more difficult for Parker the second time around at the age of 45.
Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey suffered a miscarriage and
underwent various fertility treatments before becoming pregnant with her
twins at age 40. She has not gone into much detail about what
infertility treatments she used, other than saying that she used
acupuncture to help her relax and progesterone supplements until week 10
of her pregnancy. Although she never admitted to using IVF, it is
rumored that she did. Progesterone is not typically supplemented after a
miscarriage unless the patient has used some for of Alternative
Reproductive Treatment (ART)-like IVF-to become pregnant.
Elizabeth Banks
Elizabeth Banks and her husband of 20 years
tried unsuccessfully for years to become pregnant. Banks admits she tried
several fertility treatments including IVF with no luck.
They eventually used a gestational surrogate and were able to welcome son, Felix in 2011 and then two years later another son, Magnus, also born via gestational surrogate. Banks was private about the topic, but also somewhat candid, calling her belly broken and explaining it as making a
“babycake in another woman’s oven.”
Banks did explain that her problem was just that her embryos would not implant, which hints that she might have tried IVF. She also said
they chose surrogacy (rather than adoption) because it was the only way for she and her husband to have a baby that was half her and half him.
Giuliana Rancic
E! host Giuliana Rancic and her husband Bill
tried to get pregnant for a year before deciding to open up about their
struggles with infertility on their reality show.
After a failed IUI,
the 35-year-old actress was told that her age was an issue: her eggs
were too old. She was also told that she was underweight and needed to
gain 5-10 pounds to increase her chances of conceiving.
The
couple turned to IVF and she became pregnant on the first try.
Unfortunately that
pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and the second
attempt was unsuccessful. When they were getting ready to try a third
time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer medication made
her unable to carry a baby, so they ended up using a
gestational
surrogate. The couple welcomed their first baby, a son (Edward) in
August 2012. Rancic’s breast cancer made her story quite different from
many, but I love that she shared her struggles and her journey every
step of the way through her reality TV show.
Nancy Juvonen (Jimmy Fallon)
Jimmy Fallon is another star who has been fairly open about he and his wife, Nancy Juvonen’s struggles with infertility. In fact,
the couple just welcomed a second daughter, Frances, born via surrogate in December of last year. They weren’t open from the beginning: the couple did not tell anyone-not even their families-that they were expecting Frances or their first daughter Winne (born in July 2013) until each was born. However after the birth of Winnie, Fallon was very open about their struggle to become parents.
Fallon and his wife
tried for about five years to get pregnant. He admitted in several interviews that they tried
“everything” and even mentions injections and the embarrassment of telling friends of their baby hopes, just to have to turn around and explain that there was no baby. Besides the fun he had calling and telling people who had no idea they were expecting that they had a baby, I am sure part of the secrecy during the surrogate pregnancies was to
protect themselves from having to share the news if something did go wrong.
Although they admit to trying
“every avenue” in order to conceive, neither of them ever explains what the cause of their infertility might have been. I suspect this might be another age related infertility issue, as
Juvonen was in her 40s when the couple started trying to get pregnant.
I don’t understand why more celebrities are not more open with their
fertility struggles. If more people talked about it the topic would
become less taboo. I understand that it is a hard road that might be
better handled emotionally in private but
why all the secrecy after the
fact? Especially when they've already admitted they had a problem, why not tell what caused the infertility or how they overcame it?
Babies are miracles on their own and IVF babies are also medical miracles. The
fact that so many remain quiet about what infertility treatments they
might have used after the fact just makes me think that many women still
feel ashamed that their bodies did not work the way they were supposed
to on their own. It is sad that society has made women feel
broken when
infertility is out of our control.
